January 2011
3 posts
December 2010
15 posts
Books of 2010
Again, like last year, I managed to get through some fantastic books over the past 12 months. Actually, as I look at the list right now - damn - some great books I’ve been able to read. There were a couple of strange asides from what I would call my normal reading tastes, but also plenty of more standard fare as well. I have made substantially fewer comments about the books this...
November 2010
16 posts
Is Adam Levin the New David Foster Wallace?
Is Harold Miner Jerry Stackhouse Anfernee Hardaway Vince Carter Kobe Bryant the new Michael Jordan?
I hate these questions, but the Salon review of Levin’s The Instructions is a good one.
Read HERE.
“And wasn’t it terrible, how much he looked forward to those moments, so much so that sometimes even a ride by himself on the subway was the best part of the day? Wasn’t it terrible that after all the work one put into finding a person to spend one’s life with, after making a family with that person, even in spite of missing that person…that solitude was what one...
2 tags
Had a beer with a close friend tonight. Long overdue. Discussed all things fair and foul and finished the night wondering where the time went and wishing we had more. This is how all good friends should leave it, no? Also, decided on our next book club selection. Great evening.
“Billy had a framed prayer on his office wall which expressed his method for keeping going, even though he was unenthusiastic about living. A lot of patients who saw the prayer on Billy’s wall told him that it helped them to keep going, too. It went like this: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom always to tell...
1 tag
October 2010
28 posts
1 tag
“How it is I know not; but there is no place like a bed for confidential disclosures between friends. Man and wife, they say, there open the very bottom of their souls to each other; and some old couples often lie and chat over old times till nearly morning. Thus, then, in our hearts’ honeymoon, lay I and Queequeg — a cosy, loving pair.”
Herman Melville, Moby Dick
“You can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness, or even despair - the sense that you can never completely put on the page what’s in your mind and heart. You can come to the act with your fists clenched and your eyes narrowed, ready to kick ass and take down names. You can come to it because you want a girl to marry you or because you want to change...
1 tag
“Good manners are an admission that everybody is so tender that they have to be handled with gloves. Now, human respect—you don’t call a man a coward or a liar lightly, but if you spend your life sparing people’s feelings and feeding their vanity, you get so you can’t distinguish what should be respected in them.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender is the Night
“Usually we walk around constantly believing ourselves. “I’m okay” we say. “I’m alright”. But sometimes the truth arrives on you and you can’t get it off. That’s when you realize that sometimes it isn’t even an answer—it’s a question. Even now, I wonder how much of my life is convinced.”
Markus Zusak, The Book Thief
